IJCSN International Journal of Computer Science and Network, Volume 2, Issue 4, August 2013

ISSN (Online) : 2277-5420

www.ijcsn.org

20

Cable Fault Monitoring and Indication: A Review

1

Shweta Gajbhiye, 2 S. P. Karmore

Department of Computer Science and Engineering, GHRCE, Nagpur, Maharashtra, India

Department of Computer Science and Engineering, GHRCE, Nagpur, Maharashtra, India

Abstract
Underground cable power transmission and distribution system
are susceptible to faults. Accurate fault location for transmission
lines is of vital importance. A quick detection and analysis of
faults is necessity of power retailers and distributors. This paper
reviews various fault locating methods and highly computational
methods proposed by research community that are currently in
use. The paper also presents some guidelines for design of fault
location and remote indication, for reducing power outages and
reducing heavy loss of revenue.

Keywords: Power Cable, Fault, Fault Location, TDR.

1. Introduction
In electrical utilities, transmission lines form the
backbone of power systems. With regard to reliability and
maintenance costs of power delivery, accurate fault
location for transmission lines is of vital importance in
restoring power services and reducing outage time as
much as possible. Accurately locating faults on high
voltage transmission networks is very important for
utilities to allow a quick maintenance action of the repair
crew.
Underground power cables have been widely implemented
due to reliability and environmental concerns. To improve
the reliability of a distribution system, accurate
identification of a faulted segment is required in order to
reduce the interruption time during fault, i.e. to restore
services by determining a faulted segment in a timely
manner. In the conventional way of detecting fault, an
exhaustive search in larger scale distance has been
conducted. This is time consuming and inefficient, Not
only that the manpower resources are not utilized, but also
the restoration time may vary depending on the reliability
of the outage information. As such deriving an efficient
technique to locate a fault can improve system reliability.
POWER utilities need an accurate and automatic fault
location method for ULVDN. This is due to number of
key factors namely: reliability of supply, quality of supply,
reducing operating costs of repairs and charging staff
works practices, and low tariff charges to maintain a
competitive edge. Path selection problems results
unnecessary circumvent which in turn costs more in the

overhead line construction. The trend of transmission line

construction from overhead to underground is increasing
even though the underground system costs more for initial
construction. However, the underground system requires
faster detection and correction of accidental faults along
the lines for more reliable service.
Fault location detection is finding exact fault position of
cable when there were any unwanted accidents like short
circuit, open circuit, insulation breakdown etc. Because of
large damage and inference of power cable accident,
power authorities want to have exact fault detection
method to recover power lines as soon as possible.
Various methods have been developed to reduce damage
and inference. But most of fault detection methods have
shortcomings. Some have low accuracy, some are difficult
to apply because of surrounding environment, and some
give unwanted damage to healthy neighboring cable and
facilities [3-4].
Among these methods, pulse echoing method is regarded
as most useful ones. This method use time difference
between incident and reflected pulse to calculate fault
location detection and it has relatively high accuracy
because it use short period pulse. Although it has high
accuracy, pulse echoing method has some drawbacks.
When we apply this method to low impedance accident,
the error will be increased. If cable is not open circuit and
there is no impedance change, there are no reflected pulse
waves, and it is difficult to find fault location. Also high
voltage pulse generator is needed for pulse echoing
method and it is one of its drawbacks. To make high
voltage pulse generator one should pay another money,
and inserting high voltage to cable can cause another
damage to cable and facilities. It is usually applied to
detect fault location after accident arises and this way
need more time to repair.
Because it is very expensive system, on-line monitoring
and fault location detection of cable require so big money.
And its natured drawbacks mentioned above, power
authorities needs new methods which can detect fault
location exactly and which on-line monitoring is possible.

IJCSN International Journal of Computer Science and Network, Volume 2, Issue 4, August 2013
ISSN (Online) : 2277-5420
www.ijcsn.org

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2. Types of Cable Faults

3.1 A-Frame Method

Cable faults can be categorized into three main types :

Open conductor faults, shorted faults, and high
impedance faults [1-2].

In A-Frame method, a pulsed direct current (DC) is

injected into the faulty cable and earth terminal to locate
the ground fault. The DC pulse will flow through the
conductor and return via earth from the earth fault
location back to the ground stake as shown in Figure 1.
The flow of pulsed DC through the ground will produce a
small DC voltage. A sensitive voltmeter is used to
measure the magnitude and direction of the DC voltage in
segments of the earth along the cable route. Analyzing the
results of the measuring voltage along the route, the
location of the fault in the cable can be pinpointed AFrame is an accurate method but it is not the fastest one,
since the operator has to walk along the length of the
cable from the transmitter to the ground fault.

2.1 Open Conductor Fault

An open conductor fault is where the conductor of a cable
is completely broken or interrupted at the location of the
cable fault. It is possible to have a high resistance shunted
faults(to ground) on one or both sides of the faulted
conductors location.

2.1 Shorted Fault

A shorted fault is characterized by a low resistance
continuity path to ground (shunted fault). The resistance
from the conductor to ground is lower than the surge
impedance of the cable for a shorted low resistance fault.

2.3 High Impedance Fault

A high impedance fault contains a resistive path to
ground (shunted fault) that is large in comparison to the
cables surge impedance. This fault type may also
demonstrate non-linear resistive characteristics which
allow the apparent resistance to vary with the level of
applied voltage or current.

This method may face a problem if the return DC finds

some easier path back to the earth stake of transmitter
instead of returning through the ground. If the ground is
sandy, paved which provides high resistance and
consequently, less current flows through the ground. In
that case, the voltmeter fails to measure the voltage and
fault detection becomes complicated.

3. Types of Faults Detection

The faults occurring in the power lines and cables can be
classified into four main categories- short circuit to
another conductor in the cable, short circuit to earth, high
resistance to earth and open circuit.
Figure 1 An A-Frame method of finding cable fault location

Not all approaches work best for each type of fault. Four
methods that are mostly used in detecting fault location
are described as follows.

A frame

Thumper

Time Domain Reflectometer (TDR)

Bridge methods
A persistent short circuit to earth fault can be most easily
located using A-Frame method. For high resistance to
earth faults. A-Frame method is not always sufficient. In
this case, thumper method needs to be used to reduce fault
resistance. Thumper method alone may be sufficient for
fault location but when applied for a longer duration, it
may damage the cable insulation. A-Frame is not useful
for locating faults which do not have an earth connection.
Time Domain Reflectometer (TDR) is suitable for
determining the locations of most of the faults.

3.2 Thumper Method

Thumper is basically a high voltage surge generator
which is used to apply a reasonable high voltage to the
faulty core of an underground cable to generate a high
current arc resulting in a loud noise to hear above the
ground. This method requires very high current thump at
voltages as high as 25 kV to make underground noise
loud enough to be loud enough to be heard from the
ground.
In thumper method of finding fault locations Like AFrame, the thumper method requires an operator needs to
walk along the path of the cable and listen for the sound
from above the ground. Different ground conditions,
nearby traffic and noises may make this sound hard to
listen to make a clear distinction.

IJCSN International Journal of Computer Science and Network, Volume 2, Issue 4, August 2013
ISSN (Online) : 2277-5420
www.ijcsn.org

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3.4 Bridge Method

Bridge methods used for locating faults in underground
cables are based on modified Wheatstone circuit where
direct current is used to measure the resistance in order to
calculate distance of the fault in percentage of the total
line length. Murray and Glaser bridges [1] use the similar
principal for calculating the distance of the fault. Brief
description of these bridges is given as follows.
Figure 2 Functional block diagram of a TDR

3.3 Time Domain Reflectometry (TDR)

In the Time Domain reflectometry (TDR) method, a low
energy signal is sent through the cable where the perfect
cable with the uniform characteristic impedance returns
the signal within a known time and with a known profile.
This time and profile of the signal is altered once the
cable has impedance variation due to any fault. The
impedance variation causes a portion of the signal
reflected back to source. The reflected signal fortifies the
original signal when there is an increase in characteristic
impedance at the fault location, while it opposes the
original signal when there is a decrease in characteristic
impedance. Graphical representation on the Time Domain
Reflectometry (TDR) screen gives the user the distance to
the fault in time units. The actual distance can be
calculated by multiplying the time by signal velocity. The
functional block diagram of a TDR is given in Figure 3.

Figure 3 Wheatstone bridge circuit.

Figure 3 shows the Wheatstone bridge circuit where

R1,R2,R3 are the known resistors and Rx is unknown
resistor. When the galvanometer represented by the circle
in the figure shows zero current flow, the unknown
resistor Rx value can be found from the other known
resistor value using following equation

Therefore, the low voltage TDR and the thumper methods

can be integrated into a single system where a low voltage
TDR pulse is taken of the cable under test and stored in a
display memory. Then the thumper can be used to send a
high voltage pulse for burning the faulty point. While the
arc is burning at the faulty point, the TDR can be used to
send the same low voltage pulse and new pulse will be
superimposed upon the first trace. The arc is low
impedance point that results in TDR pulse to reflect as it
would with a short circuit. Figure 4 shows an example of
the test with two traces of the signals one on the top of
another.

Figure 4 Murray bridge loop for cable fault location

In the figure, the dashes cursor represents the launching

point and solid cursor shows the faulty point. From these
two cursors, the machine can directly calculate the
distance of the fault. The integrated thumper and TDR
method reduces the major insulation damage of the cable
but does not discard the risk. TDR method is useful for
open circuit fault detection. Again if it has a low series
resistance at the fault the problem will be similar as high
resistance earth fault [8-9].

Figure 4 shows a Murray bridge loop for cable fault

location. Besides the faulty conductor, one healthy
conductor is required as connected to terminal T1 in the
measuring circuit. External loop wires in the circuit,
connecting the resistances at the front and the conductors
at the cable end, should have close to zero resistance. In
Murray Bridge loop, for the balance condition of the
galvanometer. The equations for calculating the conductor
resistances to the fault location are given below.

(1)

IJCSN International Journal of Computer Science and Network, Volume 2, Issue 4, August 2013
ISSN (Online) : 2277-5420
www.ijcsn.org

23
calculation via sending end voltage and differential
voltage can be used for differentiating between the
different types of cable defects from phase information. It
needs study to be conducted to find the best way of
visualizing the results, especially the magnitude response.

(2)
(3)
Where R1 + R2 = R
Fault distances can be calculated from the resistor values
using the conductor resistance per unit length of cable.

Figure 5 Glaser measuring circuit.

Glaser measuring circuit for cable fault locations is shown

in Figure 5. In this measurement circuit, two healthy
conductors (L1 and L2) of the cable with same diameter
and material are required beside the faulty conductor (L3)
As shown in Figure 4. For the balanced condition of the
circuit, the formula for finding cable fault distance is
given below.
=

(4)

Where lx is the distance of the fault from measuring end,

is the resistance up to the supply connection and lo is the
length of the cable.

4. Types of Faults Detection

Here various fault locating methods are presented, that
have been proposed by various researchers and yet to be
tested on practical field.
H. Shateri, S. Jamali Et Al., Proposed An impedance
based fault location method for phase to phase and three
phase faults[9] . This method utilized the measured
impedance by distance relay and the super imposed
current factor to discriminate the fault location. This
method is sensitive to the measured impedance accuracy
and super imposed current factor.
Abhishek Pandey, Nicolas H. Younan, Presented
underground cable fault detection and identification vis
fourier analysis[10]. The methods of impedance

A.Ngaopitakkul, C. Pothisarn, M. Leelajindakrairerk[11],

presented behaviour of simultaneous fault signals in
distribution underground cable using DWT. The
simulations were performed using ATP/EMTP, and the
analysis behaviour of characteristics signals was
performed using DWT. Various case studies have been
carried out including the single fault and simultaneous
fault.
Yuan Liao, Ning Kang [12] has presented fault location
algorithms without utilizing line parameters. By utilizing
unsynchronized voltage and current measurements from
both ends of line without requiring line parameters based
on the distributed parameter line model. The fault
location estimatie is not sensitive to measurement errors
while line parameter estimates are sensitive to
measurement
errors.
Thus
relatively
precise
measurements are required to obtain accurate line
parameter estimates.
S. Navaneethan, J. J. Soraghan, W. H. Siew, F.
McPherson, P. F. Gale [13] , presented an automatic fault
location method using TDR. This method uses acquired
data from an existing TDR instrument. It enables user of
TDR equipment to locate ULVDN cable faults without
user interpretation.
These fault locating methods describe in this sections are
mostly computational. The authors of this paper found no
evidence that they are in use in practical field to pinpoint
the cable faults. However, these methods are mostly
suitable for
comparing
the performances of
distant/impedance based operating relays for their
operational accuracy.

5. Conclusions
This paper explains the importance of locating faults in
the distribution network and reviews some of the cable
fault locating methods that are mostly used in practical
field. There is a need to immediate indication about
occurrence of a fault via remote communication; hence it
needs to implement some techniques which will help
power utilities in immediate indication of fault occurrence
and accurate methods for locating faults. To facilitate the
development, the preliminary investigation requirements
and the essential segments to be verified are presented in
this paper.

IJCSN International Journal of Computer Science and Network, Volume 2, Issue 4, August 2013
ISSN (Online) : 2277-5420
www.ijcsn.org

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